“Words have been my great love”, said the poet and storyteller Antoni Vidal Ferrando (SantanyÃ, 1945) when he received the Jaume Fuster award this Tuesday at the headquarters of the Catalan Writers’ Association (AELC), at the Barcelona University.
Earlier, the president of the association, Sebastià Portell, claimed that “his work deserves to be more alive than ever”, and that is why they have prepared several activities with the winner in Barcelona (May 11), Palma (May 23 ) and Valencia (May 30).
Poet and storyteller – teacher by profession – he is the author of thirteen books of poems (the last one, Si entra boira, no tendré on anar (Proa), won the Carles Riba prize in 2021), five novels – with a trilogy about Mallorca in the 20th century – in addition to a collection of short stories, a diary and several historical essays. His work, which has received numerous awards, has been translated into Spanish, French, English, German, Galician, Dutch, Hindi, Romanian and Russian.
After thanking right and wrong, because “it is not at all easy to reach any important goal without the help of others”, Vidal explained that “we always write the same book, we have the same obsessions and dreams”, but he tries do not repeat yourself because “the world and life are multifaceted”. This does not make it easy for him: “I find it very difficult to write, I can spend a week thinking about the end of a poem”, and he has even woken up with the tearjerker. The author, who has not been denouncing “the internet dictatorship”, has also claimed that for him all literature must contain poetry, only that in verse and prose “the density changes”.
The critic Sam Abrams, in the gloss he has made, has highlighted that his work “addresses the painful rift between the horror and the dream that afflicts the modern and contemporary world, the rift between the reality of our world full of excesses and abuses of all kinds and the dream of a better world, a more balanced and harmonious world that is expressed through artistic beauty”, because “he is a discoverer of beauty among the miseries of our world” . An art, in short, that “offers us a certain sense of consolation, an alternative way, a certain sense of exit from our current impasse”. He also insisted on “the quality of poets’ prose, which is often not taken into account”, and he assured that “we have the Catalan Thomas Hardy”, because Vidal “is a great poet and a great prose writer”.
Since 2001, the Jaume Fuster award has recognized the career of a writer, an honorary award voted on by the association’s members. This year the finalists were Antoni Munné-Jordà and Josep Maria Sala-Valldaura. Among the previous winners are authors such as Jesús Moncada, Quim Monzó, Jaume Cabré, Maria Antònia Oliver, Carles Hac Mor, Antònia Vicens or last year’s winner, Olga Xirinacs.
